The Incredible Vanishing Husband

I love my Husband and he is a good man, but why oh why does he offer to go to the shop, and then go missing for several hours. I think I know, as he has realised the shop is next door to our local pub, and this is where his friends will be, and is also his opportunity to avoid having to watch the Soaps with me.

The fact he wants to spend time with his friends, and maybe have a few beers doesn't bother me at all. What I can't understand is why he can't simply tell me he fancies a beer down at the local, but instead claims to be going to the shop to get me some potatoes or some ciders, or whatever else it is that I need.

This year he has been a whole lot better, but last year was a nightmare. He would tell me he was popping up to check on our fishing lake, and three hours or more later, after it had got dark, he would stroll in and claim he had been at the lake all along, and had been chatting to an angler. I doubted this so severely on some occasions, that to prove my point I would walk up to the lake myself, often after midnight, just so I could say to him, "Well I went up there, and needless to say, no-one was there, and no doubt never were".

Of course he would then claim they had just packed up, minutes after he had said goodbye, but I knew better. The rows it caused us were pretty horrendous, as I detest lying, and cannot cope with it when it is aimed at me especially. I am far too wise to not "smell a rat", and of course, after a few frinks, he is easily caught out.

Of course being a woman I was always was several steps ahead of him, and often when dinner was ready and I tried to phone him, only for him to tell me he was up at the lake and would be home in a few minutes. I would give him half an hour, and if he still wasn't home, I would drive to the pub myself and catch him red handed. Shortly after I would forceably drag him home, and another blow up would ensue.

On one occasion he tried to tell me he hadn't been to the pub at all that evening. I duly left him in the house, drove to the pub, and simply said to the barmaid, "Can you tell me what time Richard left please, as he hasn't got home yet". Of course she thought nothing of saying, "He left 20 minutes ago", which meant she unintentionally landed him "right in it".

Another time I phoned the pub and when I asked for him, they said "Is that the Richard with the fishing lake?", and when I said "Yes", they told me he had left half an hour ago. Richard tried to say it was a case of mistaken identity, but I knew better.

Friends of ours found it hilarious on one occasion when the weather was gale force winds and torrential rain, and they were driving around the Guernsey coast road. What they saw was Richard, doubled up against the wind, fighting his way to the pub that was still another 30 metres or so away, and armed with a bag of shopping. As my friend put it to me later, she had said to her boyfriend, "I bet Richard is off for a sneaky pint that Cindy doesn't know about", and they both laughed.

I have even known him tell me he has been up at our lake and has sold a couple of fishing Day Tickets to people who wanted to fish that night. The truth of the matter that emerged was that he had taken the money out of his own account to give to me and let on that they were Day Ticket Sales as a cover for where he had been really. He finally admitted this sometime later. What worried me most was that if I put these "sales" through the accounts, we would pay tax on them when they weren't even genuine sales.

Few things are worse than when he admits he has been in the pub, but claims he has only had two pints. I can always tell roughly how many he has really had simply by his speech, (which slurs slightly when he has had more than four). To make matters worse he gets verbal diarrhoea, and will arive home right in the middle of a programme I am interested in, and promptly ramble on and on about who he has been talking to, what they said, how he had a 'really interesting conversation' etc. In the end he starts to doze off in the chair, and to make matters worse he begins to snore. In frustration I will wake him up, to which his usual response is, "I am not asleep, I am thinking". Of course my reaction is, "People who are thinking don't snore, GO TO BED!".

I will then spend the next hour persuading him to give up and 'go to bed', but he will always strenuously avoid this until I get really annoyed because by now I have missed most of my programme due to repeatedly waking him up from his snores. My attitude is one of, 'Bed is for sleeping, lounges are for watching TV. If you know you have work in the morning and you are tired, please please simply go to bed where you can snore in peace and let me enjoy my TV programmes'.

This year he has been a whole lot better, and usually tells me if he intends to go to the pub. I suspect a lot of the problem last year was that he had a friend whose marriage was in trouble, and this guy was in the pub constantly, and would send Richard text after text to come and join him so he had some company. This friend has since split with his wife, and having met a new lady in his life he has moved in with her on a different part of the island, which means the pub they were drinking at is no longer his 'local'. Now Richard hardly ever goes there, and usually we are together when he does, and this is generally a weekend.

What I would love to know is, am I the only Wife that has this problem? Is it simply a man thing, and do they enjoy the pint more if it is an illicit one, as opposed to one us Wives know about? I know on the occasions I have known Richard was going for a pint, he has told his friends, "I am legal tonight", and hasn't stayed out too long as he also said to them, "it is not as much fun when she knows".